In Angle-Saxon countries, above all in America, suicide pact has a more complex connotation. The most frequent is the one of a suicide pact among adolescents.
Rebellion against parents and society is typical of adolescence. This instinct for protest has always been seen from a sociopsychological point of view, but the biological element is predominant and finds confirmation, as we’llsee, in animal world.
In human world, a son, before replacing, physically, his parents and when this isn’t possible yet, strongly feels the need to replace them ideologically, that is, he rejects, besides rules, also all that comes from his parents. When this protest takes place outside, it causes great revolutions.
The ’68 one [1], for better (imagination, creativity) or worse (terrorism, homicides ), gave official ways where to canalize this rebellion. When the wave of rebellion flows back, some children find out they have totally taken their parents’ place and realize to share and defend the power they had challenged.
In periods, like the present one, of so called reflux, whithout any cultural and symbolic way out for the biological instinct of getting rid of father, the latter can only express itself directly with the physical killing of parents from their children, alone or together with their mates. The replacement of parents with their children happens, this way, in advance without waiting for fathers’ natural death of old age or disease[2]. Of course they are cases of children with a particular genetic tendency to aggressiveness and homicide.
In all other cases or one remains with the family of origin for long time, but renouncing a family of his own ( phenomenon of the never grown-ups who live with their family at home ) or leaves the family. This leaving, for people with a genetic tendency to depression, can coincide with suicide.
In lion packs, the male which can supplant father, completely substitutes it and it is father lion that must go away or accept a subordinate position. If son lion doesn’t succeed in this operation, it is the one that goes away no less than fifteen kilometres far from the family of origin.Once alone the lion, no matter father or son, mostly dies, yielding to one or more factors regulating animal population.
In an epoch of revolution father replacement may be symbolic and leaving the family of origin to live in a community of equals may not be so difficult for children.
In an epoch of restoration this cannot happen and animal man can kill his father or remain in the pack family recognizing the paternal authority, often only economic, and giving up with a family of his own. The female of animal man can also have children, but in this case, staying with the origin pack family, her partner is unknown or isn’t accepted. Like the case of lions, men or women can also leave the origin pack family and set up another family or be single.
In many cases this going away to set up another pack of singles is premature and has no chance of survival, either material or above all ideological. The neopack, made up with few people, causes many cases of suicide pacts. Two episodes, which took place in U.S.A., hovering between rebellion-aggression and escape -suicide are indicative in this sense.
In one of the two episodes it seems apparently that suicide had happened by chance. Actually crossing America at full speed on a robbed car means certainly to be stopped by police and since, in this case, the protagonists, two adolescents and a twelve-year-old girl, had decided to shoot themselves [3] suicide was sure.
Also here, like in the Italian case of the Russian roulette repeated five times, it’s clear the attempt of giving an ideological meaning, courage and adventure, to a decision of an evident escape-suicide. Suicide is still considered by adolescents as a form of cowardice. Therefore it may be necessary to find a pretext, like the desire for an adventure, the courage to challenge authorities( parents ).
In another episode the ideological pretext urging to suicide is much stronger. Three English youngsters, emigrated temporarily to America, wear black tracksuits in military style, paint their faces with war colours,but, instead of going to war, committed suicide. Jane, the first of the three, twenty-three years of age, in a secluded spot in North Caroline.
The day after the other two, Ruth and Stephen, at 1500 kilometres away, at Mesa in Arizona, enter a shooting range and start shooting wildly to the targets, then , all of a sudden, turn their arms and kill themselves.
The episode makes us think that if there had been an opportunity to give vent to their depression in a war, maybe they wouldn’t have committed suicide.If, for example, they had been in Bronx or Los Angeles, or even in old England at the Moods’ time[1], they should probably have given vent to their depression with heterodirected forms of aggression. Present ideology, on the contrary, thinks more of autoaggression and so of suicide, and myths are damned rock singers who finally commit suicide.
The three English youngsters, weren’t accidentally fans of the English pop band Joy Division whose leader Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980, by hanging himself in London on the eve of a tour of concerts in U.S.A.
Another rock singer, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide in April 1994 and we know at least one case in which a suicide pact(among two French girls of twelve and thirteen years of age) was made imitating the singer: We died as Kurt did” they had left written in a note and :” Today is the great day” they had said to their schoolmates, on the morning of their suicide.
To commit suicide also Take That may be enough for two twenty-year-old boys from Verbania(Piedmont) who were listening to them at full volume while the exhaust gas of their car was killing them inside the driver compartment.
In 1968 the myth was rebellion which might result in extreme forms like terrorism, now the basic phenomenon is rock music intended as a rejection of rules.
The refusal of life as a refusal of accepting its rules seems to be the only solution when rules themselves cannot be changed.
[1] The year when the historical period of the so called youth ptotest started in Italy.
[2] The lengthening of life and the reduced space for young people owing to an excessive presence of the old might induce already predisposed persons to anticipate natural turnover violently.
[3] With a pistol they had bought.
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
to be continued in:
11°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eleventh part)
12°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Twelfth part)
13°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Thirteenth part)
14°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fourteenth Part)
15°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XV part)
16°)Suicides (Le Mal de vivre Sixteenth part)
17°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XVII part)
18°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XVIII part)
19°) (Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XIX part)
20°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XX part)
21°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Twenty-first)
See also:
1)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre First Part)
2)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Second part)
3)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Third Part)
4°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fourth Part)
5°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fifth part)
6°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Sixth Part)
7°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Seventh Part)
8°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eighth Part)
9°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Nineth part)
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.